Appel à Communication / Call for Paper : Popular music and identity politics: making, archiving, transmitting, and receiving radio

Popular music and identity politics: making, archiving, transmitting, and receiving radio

Deadline for proposals:Oct 31, 2015

Organizers: SNSF project “Broadcasting Swissness:” University of Basel, University of Zurich, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts in cooperation with Studienkreis Rundfunk und Geschichte e.V.

In the past few years research on the radio has been experiencing a revival in the social sciences and humanities. Interdisciplinary studies inspired by various approaches such as sound studies or the anthropology of the senses address cultural identity politics through the radio, such as the history of broadcasting stations, their programming, or sound archives as audiovisual heritage. Not least, they address the meaning of the radio for and within the everyday life world by investigating the reception of radio broadcasts or the shift towards online media.

The conference draws on current research to loom at the acoustic dimension of cultural politics or identity politics on and through the radio, including the actors, practices, discourses, and the institutional and societal contexts. It looks to bring together the different research threads within the socials sciences and humanities on identity politics, popular/folk music and the radio as a research theme. Researchers are invited to send proposals that deal with the radio ethnographically, in case studies, theoretically, from historical or contemporary perspectives, or by applying artistic or museological approaches. Above all, in addition to scholars from folklore/social and cultural anthropology or related fields, researchers from neighboring disciplines are especially welcomed to send abstracts. Acoustic contributions will also be considered and may be included in papers.

Conference languages are German, English, and French.

Interested colleagues are invited to send proposals with an abstract of max. 300 words, short CV, and technical requirements via email to:

The research blog RadioGraphy is a publication of the Group of researches and studies on the radio (GRER), a scientific association for the promotion of the study on mass media-Radio. It will be intended to reflect and dessiminate, in a flexible way, radio research, both in France, in the francophone world and in the rest of the world. (for more information see section "à propos") ;